


Fidelity

by Prix



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Honesty, Infidelity, M/M, Pre-OT3, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 00:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: Peter comes home to confess.
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke, Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey
Comments: 6
Kudos: 72
Collections: Trope Bingo: Round Thirteen





	Fidelity

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my [**Trust and Vows**](https://prixmium.dreamwidth.org/15190.html) square on my [trope_bingo](https://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) card. 
> 
> I wrote a similar scene to this in an RP with my best friend a long time ago. This pales in comparison, but I am trying to practice writing shorter fic. 
> 
> One thing that sort of baffles me is how some people have an infidelity squick a mile wide even if they like polyamory. I am not saying I _like_ infidelity, but within contexts like these I can see them as simple failures of communication that can be worked through. So that's sort of why I wanted to write this. Feel free to leave feedback please!

It happens before he knows what he is doing. Neal has done another stupid, death-defying thing. He is back, safe and sound, having run straight into Peter’s shoulder. 

They are alone in a dark room that belongs to neither of them, traffic-shadows and orange light seeping in through the windows. It’s a jolt of affection and relief he feels, and every time it feels like it is festering, though there’s probably a more flattering word for it. 

He has ruffled his hair before. He has even hugged him, from time to time. He isn’t a stranger to touching Neal Caffrey, which perhaps ought to have been his first clue that something was going terribly awry in his personal life. 

He is kissing him before it occurs to him that it is the weirdest and maybe the worst thing he has ever done. He has never kissed a man before. He definitely shouldn’t be kissing someone he’s responsible for, in a legal sense. He shouldn’t be kissing a man he knows lies without even meaning to, sometimes. But more than anything else, he shouldn’t be kissing anyone but his wife. 

Peter knows all of these things, but the connection between his body and his brain doesn’t catch up with him before he feels Neal kissing him back. 

Peter’s fingers are in Neal’s dark curls at the back of his head. He hears Neal draw a sharp breath in through his nose. He feels the strange but tantalizing sensation of a little bit of stubble brushing his upper lip. It isn’t just a peck of a kiss that could he explained away after an awkward conversation. Neal’s hand is on his shoulder, and he doesn’t even think about the liability of how close his sidearm is. 

Too long later, they both pull away. Heavy breathing, staring, mumbled apologies, and Peter can’t say he knows which of them finds a reason to flee faster. 

The guilt twists in his stomach, and he hopes to God that no one at the office has any way to find out. But that is a secondary concern. For once, without even thinking about what else he has to do, Peter goes straight home. 

He manages to get there before midnight, which is a small miracle. He looks around his house. He pets the dog but then withdraws his hand. He takes a deep breath, feeling as if he is memorizing it before it no longer belongs to him. He is sitting heavily on the couch, trying to remember the use of his legs, when he hears her coming down the stairs. 

“Peter?” Elizabeth asks, trusting that it is. She comes closer and turns on a lamp. “You’re home,” she remarks, folding her arms across her pajamas against the chill in the air. It sounds like congratulations at first, but of course she can read him like a book. She starts to frown. 

“Hey, El,” Peter says, tasting the words like they won’t ever be the same again. He laces his fingers together. He looks down at his wedding band and feels sick. Possibly the worst part of it is that he doesn’t feel the anger that he ought to feel. Not at himself. Not at Neal. He just feels ashamed. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks. 

“Could you… El, could you sit down? Next to me, over there, wherever,” he says, gesturing to the available seating in the living room. 

“... Sure?” Elizabeth replies. She sits right beside him, turning bodily toward him and putting her arm around him. She envelops him so easily, trying to comfort him before she knows a thing. He hates himself a little more. “What’s up?” she asks. 

“We need to talk,” Peter says as if reciting a line he’d heard in a movie once. 

“Uh-oh,” Elizabeth asks, taking it for what it means but not pulling away. After all, she can’t know how bad it is until he just comes out and says it. 

“Don’t… look, you don’t owe me anything, okay? However you… react… is how you react. But don’t… don’t hold back, okay?” Peter pleads, hanging his head. He finds that he can’t pull away from her until he has to. He has the sense that he’s going to spend the foreseeable future out in the cold in every way he can imagine. Just a little longer, selfishly. 

“Alright, Peter. You’re scaring me. A little bit. So if you could just… get to the point?” Elizabeth asks, finishing after apparently hesitating on the phrasing. 

“Right. The point,” he says. “Well, I…” One more glance at his wedding band. Then he exhales the words as he stares at the rug on the floor, beneath his feet. “I kissed Neal. And he kissed me, and we…” But he doesn’t want to give her anything she doesn’t need to carry with her. That’s enough to condemn him. He’s guilty. 

“You what?” she asks. She tenses a little, but he just feels her arms lift up a bit rather than jerk away from him. Her tone goes a bit higher, but she sounds surprised rather than angry. 

“I…” he says, but she cuts him off. 

“No, I heard you,” she assures him, drawing one of her hands back from him to wave it a bit in front of his face to indicate that he doesn’t need to say it again. He watches her with dread. 

He thinks she starts to smile. Then he knows she starts to smile as she starts to laugh, pressing her hand over her mouth instead as she tries to hide it. 

“El… I mean, Elizabeth, what are you doing?” he asks, voicing it but just above a whisper. 

She lets him go when he shifts his weight away from her, only to turn to look at her more clearly, but she keeps trying to stifle laughter. 

“Could you… please say something? Something else,” Peter prompts, trying to be as humble as he knows how to be. 

“Oh, Peter,” she says, granting his request. She finally marshals herself into silence and puts her hands against her lips in a prayer-shaped gesture. Then, finally, she reaches out with one and traces the shape of his jaw with her thumb. 

It is his turn for his eyes to brighten, to widen with surprise. 

“... You should’ve told me,” she says, a little stern but not angry. 

“Told you?” he asks. 

“How you were feeling,” she says. 

“How I was… but I’m didn’t…” 

“Don’t lie to me, Peter. You’re doing a really good job here, so don’t lie to me,” Elizabeth says. 

“A  _ good job _ ?” Peter asks incredulously.

“You came straight home and told me the truth. Didn’t you?” 

“Yes, but I owed… you that. You can… I’ll go to a motel.” 

“You’re not going anywhere, mister,” Elizabeth says as if it is something easier to talk about than the weather. He can’t look away from her, awed and confused. She seems to have lost interest in looking at him and is instead examining her fingernails. Her legs are folded a bit beneath her on the couch. Nothing he has said or done has changed anything about how much he loves her. It hurts when he thinks about it. “Do you know,” she begins to ask, breaking the silence he sure as hell didn’t know how to break, “when I felt the  _ most _ alone in our marriage?” 

Peter swallows what feels like a rock and clears his throat. 

“When?” he asks dutifully. 

Elizabeth folds her hands in her lap and looks him in the eye. 

“The first time you were chasing him. When you were… just…  _ obsessed _ . You told me.. about him. The case. But you didn’t tell me about  _ him _ . And I could see it. The way he just… fascinated you… and you wouldn’t breathe a word about  _ why _ .” 

“El, I’m sorry,” Peter says earnestly. 

“And that’s okay. But I’m not mad at you. I’m… glad you told me,” Elizabeth says. She laughs, quietly. Then she reaches over and squeezes his left hand, pointedly. “I’m only slightly disappointed that you didn’t talk to me about it first. Tell me… when you’re ready? And you can invite him over for dinner,” she says. 

“This is the most surreal and least Catholic conversation I have ever had,” Peter finds himself saying as if from somewhere above his own body. 

“Yeah?” Elizabeth asks dubiously. “I dunno. Sure sounded like confession to me.” She reaches down further and squeezes him lightly by the knee. 


End file.
